Lions’ secrecy in play creating crafty offensive options

Mike Beamish, Vancouver Sun07.26.2013

B.C.’s Andrew Harris rushes for a touchdown against Hamilton during a Tiger-Cats-Lions’ game at BC Place. Ideally, Harris could have received a ‘zone read’ play from quarterback Travis Lulay.DARRYL DYCK
/ THE CANADIAN PRESS

B.C. Lions quarterback Travis Lulay fakes a handoff to Andrew Harris during the first half of the CFL West Division Final against the Calgary Stampeders in Vancouver on Nov. 18, 2012.DARRYL DYCK
/ THE CANADIAN PRESS

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VANCOUVER — Like every head coach in professional football, Mike Benevides of the B.C. Lions is aware that if there is a weakness on his team, and it’s detected by the enemy, they surely will exploit it.

He knows that in seven other operations around the Canadian Football League other talented and dedicated men, such as the ones Benevides has on his staff, are working the same long, punishing hours, going over video, studying his players and their movements, looking for the tiniest of flaws.

The danger of open practices, which the Lions run on a daily basis at their Surrey training facility, is that information can be gleaned and passed on by anyone with a cellphone and a Twitter account. Or, perhaps a beat writer will report the workings of a new play or wrinkle in the context of a story. Or, a television video crew inadvertently might capture the Lions in a radical defensive alignment, which is why the football team strictly limits the time frame and parameters during which practice footage can be shot.

Shoot, there even might be a spy looking down from one of the condo towers beginning to proliferate in the Whalley area of Surrey the Lions call home. If that sounds too paranoid to be considered believable, don’t laugh.

Visions of men in disguises, wearing false moustaches, setting up telescopes, video cameras or diagramming plays for the opposition, and all sorts of other conspiratorial possibilities, are believed by football coaches because they’ve happened before.

“It’s a secretive game,” Benevides explained. “There are practical reasons for not divulging specific information, because the game is about tactical warfare. When you’re going to war, and you know something that gives you an edge, you keep it to yourself. But certainly there are cultural reasons, too. We’re not too far removed from recent history, when teams filmed practices and recruited spies. Why are they doing that?

“For an advantage. That’s why coaches spend an inordinate amount of time watching film, looking for signs, strengths and weaknesses. When you have an advantage, or think you have one, that’s certainly something, as competitor, you don’t want to give away.”

Don Matthews, coach of the Lions’ 1985 Grey Cup champions who was honoured last Saturday at BC Place with induction into the team’s Wall of Fame, has claimed that the practice of filming other team’s coaching staffs at work happened all the time during his days in the CFL.

In 2004, when Matthews was coaching the Montreal Alouettes, his team was accused of spying on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Four years ago, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats became aware of an individual at one of their practices, Ron Trentini, who was affiliated with the Blue Bombers and exposed for taking notes and diagramming plays. The incriminating evidence was seized and Trentini was escorted from the facility.

Several NFL teams close practices to the news media entirely. And those who allow reporters to watch do so for perhaps the final 20 minutes or half-hour and warn them not to touch on specific plays in their reports.

Players are fined heavily for losing playbooks. And NFL and CFL teams commonly sign players who were cut the week before by their next opponent to pick their brains.

All of this is context and preamble for Vancouver Sun readers interested in the schematics of the Lions’ playbook, which is extraordinary in its volume and detail.

It contains anywhere from 80-100 different plays, according to starting quarterback Travis Lulay, but it changes all the time on a weekly basis, as new wrinkles are inserted or old ones amended.

Our editors wanted us to look into the planning and execution of just one snap the Lions’ offence is likely to run in its next game, Tuesday afternoon in Toronto against the Argonauts.

We chose the “read option” a.k.a. “zone read” — Lulay’s self-admitted “favourite run play” — which has been widely used in the CFL for some time, but has only recently become in vogue in the NFL.

In football, it is a given that, if something works, especially an innovation, it gets copied.

The “read option” helped turn RG3 (Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III) into the league’s offensive rookie of the year, made a breakthrough star of Seattle Seahawks rookie QB Russell Wilson and played to the strengths of Colin Kaepernick, who led the San Francisco 49ers to the NFC championship and within five yards of a Super Bowl.

Lulay reckons the “zone/read option” will be employed “roughly 10 times” in the Lions’ next game.

“I like the stuff where there’s an option, where I could potentially be running the ball,” Lulay said. “Say we call a ‘zone read’ play. It can be as simple as me giving the ball to (Andrew) Harris in the backfield, me pitching the ball to Andrew, me keeping the ball or throwing to Manny (Arceneaux) or whoever. ‘Zone read’ is a generic name. It’s kind of a modern-day option. I’m reading the (defensive) look, and making a decision from there. That’s why I like it. We have options. We’re not pigeonholed when we come to the line of scrimmage.”

While the design of the play is for Lulay to hand it off, he has the option to keep it, depending on his read of the backside defender. If a defensive end should crash down, he can take it to the outside. Another twist allows him to throw on the run.

“Pretty much everyone in the league does some sort of zone read,” Lulay said. “Some run the play with numbers. Some refer to it by a term or wording. And the terminology can change from game to game. We have variations of the same play. It could be designed to go A gap, or it could cut back and go the front side. But then, we have some that go B gap, some that go C gap, some that are edge running plays, too. They all kind of tie in together. They all look similar, but it’s blocked a little bit differently.

“That’s the beauty of it. Because it’s a zone blocking scheme, depending on how the defence lines up, Andrew has a read key. He might be reading the guard-centre double team to the second level.

“If they get a good double-team, he goes up and hits the front side. If the guys overplay, then he cuts back to the backside A gap. It all happens really fast. You really don’t know how it’s going to go, until it happens.”

Whew.

At this point — for anyone who hears the word “gap” and instantly thinks of apparel or “Baby Gap” — it all starts to get hopelessly confusing. Yet, perhaps, that’s Lulay true intention — to make it seem as clear as mud to the layman.

Asked if the team’s zone read has a specific name that is exclusive to the Lions — Green Apple, T-Bone, 43 Zone Dog Leg Left on Four (we just made that one up) — Lulay looks at you with that wonderful gap-toothed smile of his, as if to say, “Are you serious?”

“I could tell you the specific terminology, but I’m paranoid,” Lulay says, with a chuckle. “Somebody could be watching and listening. Anywhere I’ve ever been in football it’s like that. Here, it’s no different.”

Indeed, elsewhere on the Lions the military code of “loose lips sink ships” is uniformly adhered to. A reporter feels as if he’s digging through rubble, trying to uncover the more intimate specifics of the “zone read.”

You can talk to rookie centre Matt Norman, the man whose snap initiates the sequence, left tackle Ben Archibald, charged with guarding the quarterback’s blind side, or Paris Jackson, the team’s most experienced “skill player” and a man who knows all the receiver positions, and you get virtually the same answer. They’ll talk about anything under the sun with The Sun, but when it comes to the playbook, the silent treatment kicks in.

“For us to be efficient, we don’t want the defence to know what we’re doing,” Archibald explained. “That’s probably at the root of the secrecy.”

“It’s just part of football culture, I guess,” Norman added. “We try to stay as vague as possible. You never know who’s listening. When you start talking plays ... I’ll talk to you about anything else but that.”

Jackson? Same thing.

“I wish I could tell you, but I can’t,” he said. “If the defence hears or reads about our terminology, they can react off that. Jacques (offensive coordinator Chapdelaine) puts in a lot of effort to develop these plays. I don’t think he would want that out there.”

And it’s wishful thinking to suppose that slotback Shawn Gore, finding his bearings after a recent concussion, could be vulnerable, in the belief that he might let something slip out that he shouldn’t.

The huddle is said to have been invented in the 1890s at Gallaudet University, a school in Washington, D.C. for the deaf, to prevent rivals from reading the sign language of Gallaudet’s players.

Nowadays, coaches such as Benevides frequently cover their mouths, in case somebody is reading lips on a telecast. Disguising movements and coverages is at the heart of this cerebral game.

“Can you just walk into a Fortune 500 company and ask to look through their manual on marketing, or any element of their operation?” Benevides asked. “You can’t. It’s intellectual property. Our property. And you cannot let other people into it, without having consequences. It really is no different. We put such time and effort and thought into what we do. People will say, ‘You’re being paranoid.’ Well, to be honest, I’m not paranoid. This is our livelihood. And if you give the competitor an advantage, you’re losing.

“You don’t want to do that.”

Nothing shows the sensitivity of this subject more clearly than commissioner Marc Cohon’s blessing to allow CFL teams to close practices this season if they see fit. Clubs want media coverage, of course. But when it’s deemed not in their best interest to have prying eyes at practice, the full bunker mentality option is now available.

“The great thing that commissioner Cohon gave us this off-season is to be able to close a practice,” Benevides said, gleefully. “We have the ability.”

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